


How it burns / You in my room, I could've sworn

by Skepticamoeba



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Dorks in Love, M/M, Neuroatypical Newt, Open Ending, Pining, bad communication ?, even if there's nothing much to indicate it, happy-ish ending, hurt comfort, newt is an angry crier :/, regency au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 09:33:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20504774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skepticamoeba/pseuds/Skepticamoeba
Summary: "Newt wants to not read into it. He wants for it just to be a point of principle or of habit, and not a demonstration of how Hermann will never allow himself that sort of intimacy. Hermann will never step across the threshold."





	How it burns / You in my room, I could've sworn

He’s standing at a distance in the dark, under a singular pool of light. The gaslamps are worn down at this time of night, few flickering into luminous brilliance. The snow hushes it all: the noise, the light, the tenuous tremble of Newt reaching out across the void of ice-hardened promenade. The day’s labors are over, at last. Newt can hardly bear the thought of pushing out into the cold, but Hermann is there waiting for him in his full pallidity. He wears many layers, and still it probably isn’t enough.

As Newt approaches, Hermann turns in the half-light and watches him. He is haloed, thrown against the light like the moths that batter against the lantern. Newt cannot blame them for their fruitless persistence. His fingers flex and curl, leather whispering against leather as his gloves wrinkle. It’s not the cold that burns. He cannot name the thing that lances through him—keeps him pinned to the corkboard like one of his many specimens.

“You took your time,” Hermann says, voice muffled and caught behind the large scarf around his neck. The lapels of his black greatcoat are freckled with flakes.

“New division got a shipment,” Newt says, sticking his hands in his coat pockets. Hermann hums, looking down at him through lashes leaden with snow. He blinks the flakes away and wrinkles his reddened nose. “You should come in, next time. Cold can’t possibly do you any good.”

Newt says this every time—has said this every time for the past five years. Hermann still waits for him outside, no matter the weather. Newt wants to not read into it. He wants for it just to be a point of principle or of habit, and not a demonstration of how Hermann will never allow himself that sort of intimacy. Hermann will never step across the threshold. It’s easier when he thinks this in the winter—the cold numbs the sting.

“And miss the lovely weather?” Hermann says, the corner of his mouth quirking up into a teasing smile. “I could never. Besides-” He slips his arm in Newt’s as they begin to walk. “The view out here is stunning.”

“Stunning,” Newt echoes. “Right.” It is stunning. The air so cold it leaves his throat dry, and even the depth of night is not truly pitch black. It has been made cloudy—all of it. Stunning as the way the hairs on Newt’s nape stand on end. Stunning as the warmth of Hermann’s arm pretzelled with his.

“I heard about the funding cuts,” Newt offers and Hermann sighs. His lips thin as he stares determinately ahead. The clacking of Hermann’s cane on the cobblestones is all the noise between them for a few beats.

“It was inevitable, really,” Hermann says. “They’d rather we shared the space with the philosophers or change discipline entirely!” He is explosive, and Newt secretly relishes that this is something he’s allowed to see, where others are not.

“They must see that there are applications to your theories,” Newt protests. “Haven’t you told them of the-the computer? The engine or whatnot?”

“The _analytical_ engine,” Hermann corrects. “But yes, I’ve mentioned it. They don’t seem to care much. They’re quite firm about consolidating the departments.”

What Newt likes about Hermann is the stubborn jut of his chin, and the lines creasing his face that tell of afternoon spent turning an issue around like a marble in those long fingers of his. It doesn’t take much shifting or rolling for Newt to think on this.

“You could come share my lab,” he says, words almost lost to the white puffs of his breath on each syllable. “As you know, my partner is on sabbatical.”

“_Your_ lab?” Hermann says, brought to a halt and making Newt stop as well. Hermann looks surprised, wide doe-eyes framed by dark lashes. “I couldn’t possibly impose.”

He’s released Newt’s arm and Newt begins to rub it nervously. The light gleams off Hermann’s softened face and Newt breathes shallowly through his nose, tremulous and juddering heartbeat rocking his sternum.

“There’s more than enough space,” Newt says, voice dwindled down to just another layer of snow on the grass of the promontory. “There’s a chalkboard, too.”

It’s irrational that this should make Newt feel like he should turn his face away, hide. Like he is a hare in the early morning, when dawn is but a whisper and there are only his ears above the grass to confess he is there. It’s what colleagues do all the time, and Newt shouldn’t place such weight on the offer. Except, Newt cannot deny the small, unacknowledged corner of his mind that dares hope. He doesn’t want to be this naïve, this ever-willing to press his face up against the thing that aches to beg.

“You’ve never invited me to your lab,” Hermann says, frowning. Of all possible reactions, this one is most unexpected.

“I didn’t realize I had to,” Newt replies, confused. “I’ve told you to come in for months.”

“Yes, because standing in the lobby is the same as going to your lab.” Hermann shifts in place and it makes Newt shiver, cold remembered.

Newt begins walking and Hermann follows. “I feel like you’re angry at me. Are you?” Newt asks, counting cobblestones: 248, 249, 250… He knows exactly how many cobblestones are between the lab and his flat. He wasn’t always like that, and it’s not everything that calls to be counted. He doesn’t know when it began, this need to visit and revisit his steps on the promenade. It started one day, and then lingered. Sometimes it’s the panes in the flat window. Sometimes it’s the tiny white hairs on Hermann’s ear lobes. Newt’s sure he misses some of them. He’s always messing up his numbers—that’s Hermann’s job.

“I’m not angry at you,” Hermann says, but Newt doesn’t believe him. “Just confused. As I said, I’ve never even been to your lab and now you want me to share your space?”

Newt shakes his head and hunches his shoulders in on himself. “Forget it. The space is a bit small with a partner, anyway.” He’s counting, he’s counting, he’s counting and yet the numbers have no meaning behind them. It’s like he’s flying blind. Must’ve started sometime during their letters—a nervous tic the doctors had called it. Waiting. Waiting for letters. Revising letters with a precision he holds for little else. Reaching for what is _just_ out of his grasp.

“Newt,” Hermann says, tone exasperated. “Newt,” he repeats when Newt keeps walking. Newt stops, then. “I didn’t say no.”

Newt half-turns warily, looking at Hermann, watching him catch up slowly.

“And you’ve gotten so worked up over just this conversation,” Hermann says. “I don’t want to invade your space if you truly don’t want me there.”

“I do want you,” Newt says. “There. I want you there.”

If one thing is certain, it’s that Newt wants. He wants wearily in the pit of night, his body dimpling the sheets as he feels himself sink deeper and deeper in what overtakes him, shaking, spilling, overflowing and invisibly staining the walls of his room. It stains his insides, and his hands. His very breath is awash with it. He’s certain Hermann could smell it, if he took the time to. The acrid sweetness of it.

The enormity of his desire is his own private spectacle. Hermann is utterly unaware of it. Newt has not made him aware of it. Is terrified that one day Hermann might count Newt’s numbers and see it stark. There is a pattern to all things.

“Oh,” Hermann says, eyebrows raised. “Well, that’s alright then. I’ll let the board know tomorrow.” He laughs softly, the corners of his eyes wrinkling charmingly. “I’m so relieved. I was quite worried that I’d end up in the annex with all the bearded seniors.”

“You’d fit in, I think,” Newt says, but it doesn’t quite have the humor he’d meant for it. It comes out flat. Hermann’s smile wavers and he puts his hand on Newt’s forearm. 256, 257, 258…

“Truly, Newt,” Hermann says quietly. “You don’t need to do this for me.”

“Hermann, I’ve said it’s fine,” Newt huffs, gaze unable or unwilling to stop focusing on Hermann’s hand on his arm. Thin, elegant fingers. Too many creases at each knuckle. Short nails, neatly filed.

“Then, whatever’s the matter with you?” Hermann asks, a touch of frustration in his voice. “You keep saying it’s fine, but clearly something is bothering you.”

Newt squeezes his eyes shut until he sees spots, rubbing his gloved hands over his face as he inhales deeply. What does Hermann know of being bothered? He’s never bothered by anything—only inconvenienced.“Will you come in before you go to your flat? I have, ha, a new set of mugs.”

There is a beat of silence between them. Eyes still closed, Newt imagines he can hear every single delicate, unique flake fall between the strands of Hermann’s cowlick.

“Will it make you happy?” Hermann finally asks. Newt squeezes his eyes shut impossibly tighter. The tenor, the pitch, the simple murmur of it—Newt wants to commit Hermann’s voice to memory. He has many such memories. A whole library of them. He’s good at keeping record of Hermann’s particularities. In the shameful evenings, he revisits them, counts them like the jagged and uneven cobblestones they are, and wills himself to not walk over them.

“Yes!” Newt says, sighing and opening his eyes, meeting Hermann’s concerned look. His voice is worn thin, ragged. And, though he wants nothing more than for Hermann to say it’ll make _him _happy, he doesn’t push. “Yes, Hermann,” he says, softer. “It’ll make me happy.”

Hermann is quiet during the rest of the walk, but Newt can tell he’s troubled. Selfishly, he likes, perhaps, that Hermann has him on the mind. Hermann is the type that likes to think himself unruffled, until suddenly provoked. He is docile, placid neutral expression hiding just enough bite that one does not dare approach. Hermann will not cross the threshold—Newt will not cross the threshold. But sometimes Newt wants to lay Hermann down against a carpet, looking up at the crossbeams of his flat, and prick him with small needles at all his joints. It wouldn’t hurt, not if Newt did it right. Maybe then Hermann would become less sharp shard and more oil. He’d hover, float and slice through water. He would never ache. Newt doesn’t ever want him to ache the way he does, or even the way Newt does. The way he desires Hermann is a loneliness he’d wish on no other.

At the flat, Newt starts the fire and watches from the periphery as Hermann sits on his sofa heavily. It’s not much light, so he sparks another match, hisses when he takes too long to light a candle and the flame licks at his fingers.

“Are you alright?” Hermann asks, peering over the back of the sofa.

“Fine,” Newt barks out, shoulders bowing in as if he could block any perception of himself, as if Hermann’s keen eyes wouldn’t look right through the barrier anyway. Newt is always completely undone before Hermann. Hermann might not know it, but there is something about him that makes Newt open for him. Allows him to insinuate himself in the sharp crevices.

“I’m _fine_,” Newt repeats, hands shaking around the matchbox. He takes the candle instead—lights all the others with it before returning it to the mantelpiece. The flame catches on the black varnish. His fingers smart.

Maybe it’s the late hour, or the fact that he had to re-pin several of the butterflies in the new display cases he got, or the fact that exhaustion has made his bones soft and weary. He is not usually so on edge.

“Oolong, right?” Newt murmurs, rubbing his thumb against his pained fingers, facing the fireplace and away from Hermann.

“Yes,” Hermann says and pauses. “Yes, oolong. No sugar.”

For whatever reason, Newt waits before he turns around. To steel himself? For words? For both, he supposes. Waiting. Counting. Revising. Da capo.

When he goes to put the kettle on, Hermann is out of his coat. It is neatly folded over the arm of the sofa, and Hermann has rolled his sleeves up. The fine hair on his forearms gleam golden. His head is tilted back against the sofa, and his eyes are closed—fans of lashes like two haphazard smears.

Newt wants not to be contrary. He wants to be less of this-this _thing_—fledgling, mangled—stuck in the awkward place. Newt wants to say: _Please don’t turn your eyes from me. I stop existing. I stop being throat, and mouth, and shoulder, and stomach, and regurgitated nauseous desire. When you don’t look at me, I stop. _

_Touch me_, he wants to say. _Don’t hurry it. Don’t do it in the dark_.

Oh, he is tired, he thinks as he pulls the mugs down from the cabinet and waits for the kettle to scream.

Hermann is right: he will be an upsetting lab mate. Newt will no longer see him after the fact, or when he wanders into Hermann’s study with a brew from his building. It won’t be by _chance_, or carefully spaced out. Newt will see him quite clearly, quite consistently with his nose to the chalkboard, white dust clouds on his dark vest.

“Thought you could use some company,” says a voice. Says Hermann, whose voice is unforgettable where most else is immemorable. Newt’s gaze lifts from the floor panels and Hermann is leaning against the doorway, hands empty and tucked as his arms cross. Newt wants to open his heart when Hermann comes into the room. The stray strand that does not join the rest of Hermann’s fringe hanging upon his forehead. Newt wants to push it back with the rest.

Newt wants to touch him in other ways. Less enabling ways. He wants a touch that is not transformative, just there. Firm.

He wants. 

“Where is your cane?” Newt asks, instead. He hates that he’s resentful. Hates that small part of him that wishes Hermann had stayed seated.

“I’m alright without it for the time being,” Hermann says. “How is your hand?”

“My hand?” Newt asks. Hermann approaches and takes his hand, uncurls his fingers and looks at red spots. He gently presses cool fingers against Newt’s and Newt’s fingers tremble.

“Are you cold?” Hermann asks, gaze flickering up at Newt. Newt’s breath catches heavy and wet at the back of his throat. The countertop behind him is sharp against the dip of his back. “Newt?”

Newt snatches his hand back, holds it close to himself and is so aware of how fast he is breathing, how he has not stopped staring at Hermann, how he has barely gotten in a proper breath. “The kettle,” he says and his voice breaks. “Have to—the tea.”

He pushes past Hermann and busies himself turning the stove off. The kettle hasn’t screamed, but they don’t really need it to, Newt figures. Hot water is hot water is hot water. Neither of them are strangers to that. His fingers smart more than they did when burnt. Hermann’s fingers, not too soft, not too rough, slightly dry, still chalky. There are 374 steps between his flat and the university.

“I’ve thought about it before, you know,” Newt says as he slips his strainer over one cup. He tips the leaves into it with little taps. “You being my lab mate.”

“Oh?” Hermann asks. Newt can hear him shift. “I assume you thought we wouldn’t last a day.”

“I did, at first,” Newt agrees. He pours the hot water through the strainer and lets it soak. “I don’t, now.”

“You don’t think we’ll fight?” Hermann asks. Newt’s hoping they’ll fight. They always do, but he’s hoping they’ll fight so badly Newt can allow the small anxious creature inside him to molt and change into something of another nature. Something that won’t mind being touched because it won’t conjure any image later. In everyone, sometimes hidden and sometimes not, there is something fearful.

“I think we will.” He empties the strainer and taps more leaves into it over the second mug. He pours. “It’s what we do.”

He hands Hermann his mug.

“It’s not _all_ we do,” Hermann says. “We do this, for example. And walks to our flats. And lunches, on occasion.”

“Yes,” Newt says. “And you wait for me under gaslight in the snow.”

“Yes, exactly,” Hermann says, laughing quietly into his tea and shaking his head. There they are, those wrinkles again.

“You’re ridiculous,” Newt says, and it’s soft, and it’s fond.

“You’re ridiculous,” Newt repeats, and the words fracture as he begins to tremble.

“_Oh!_” Hermann sets down his cup on the counter behind him, but Newt can’t see the action clearly. His vision is too blurred, too wet, to clumped together into abstraction. “Oh, my dear boy. You’re all out of sorts tonight. Let me see. Let me see.”

Hermann takes his hand again, the one burnt, and hums with sympathy. He takes it with infinite patience, and his hands are warmer now. He turns on the kitchen faucet and holds Newt’s hand in his, under the running water. His other hand keeps rubbing circles over Newt’s back. It starts in the middle, and its range keeps getting larger and larger. Sloping over Newt’s shoulder blades and down to the small of Newt’s back as Newt rubs at his eyes with his free hand. His hand barely hurts anymore. The tears come unbidden, and Hermann’s encouragements are so quiet in his ears. He smells of chalk, stale cigarette smoke, oolong.

“My hand’s fine, Hermann,” he finally admits when the tears have stopped and his hand has been under water so long it is starting to prune.

“You should have said something,” Hermann chides. “Honestly, Newton, sometimes you astound.” He reaches over to turn off the faucet.

Newt realizes his tea is probably over-steeped. He says nothing. He takes it in his hands anyway, and wanders back to the living room. They sit in the two green velvet chairs instead. They’re angled close enough for it to be conversational. It would be so easy for Newt to slip his hand onto the armrest of Hermann’s chair.

He is, quite suddenly, heavy. Somehow the hopelessness he’s felt before in solitude is only amplified by this. Hermann is at less than arm’s-length, and still Newt does not dare reach out. He is always reaching out in his mind, but there is only his mind to answer. He sips, grimaces. The bitter tang of something other than tea lingers.

“You should be more careful with your hands, Newt,” Hermann says. “You take them for granted.”

“It wasn’t a bad burn,” Newt says and Hermann looks at him doubtfully. “There’s been worse.”

“Maybe,” Hermann concedes. “I’ll worry no matter how paltry it is. I worry about you a great deal.” Hermann shakes his head as if he were talking to a small creature that, while amusing, cannot help but be oblivious to what’s in its best interest. Newt’s gaze catches on Hermann’s slightly parted lips, wordless.

What can Hermann expect him to say to that? “I suppose I should be grateful,” Newt says. “To know that you care.” Hermann frowns, but he seems too tired to put any heat behind it. He is softened here, broad shoulders made small in Newt’s chair. He looks younger, too—more like the man Newt imagined he was writing to before, when things were uncomplicated by presential interaction. 

“Of course I care, Newt,” Hermann says, and it is almost as if Newt can feel the roll of Hermann’s tongue over each consonant. Newt can’t possibly level Hermann with a stare. He doesn’t have the fortitude for it when Hermann looks so comfortable, and yet wounded. It’s much easier to identify the nuances in Hermann’s expression when he is thrown into sharp relief. When the light is fully on him, there is something incomprehensible about him that escapes Newt. But here, Hermann feels more solid than he ever has when he loops his arms with Newt’s.

“Why would you think I wouldn’t care?” Hermann asks, leaning closer and setting his mug aside. “Why wouldn’t I care?”

Newt presses back into the chair, away from Hermann. With each question, Hermann seems more and more distressed and Newt wants to burrow down, away from language. He is already holding himself so carefully and he doesn’t know what to do.

“Sorry, sorry,” Newt mumbles, pulling his mug close to his chest. “I know you care. It’s just—as you said. I’m out of sorts.”

“You’ve been in your head for a few days,” Hermann says. “I’ve noticed.”

“Thinking,” Newt says, quickly sipping from his tea.

“When are you not?” Hermann asks, smiling finally. “What have you been thinking about?”

“I don’t know how to describe it,” Newt says. “I don’t think you’d understand.”

“Why don’t you let me try?” Hermann says and it’s the tone, the particular texture of his voice that makes Newt look up from the depths of his teacup and meet Hermann’s gaze. It is steady, eyes dark and warm and promising. There is no bottom to that well—just a palpable intelligence that does not hide, and does not falter.

“You won’t like me if I do,” Newt says and there’s barely anything there. Barely any volume or weight to it at all. There’s little belief behind it, either. Hermann is just asking a vulnerability from him that he doesn’t know how to mediate.

“After all I’ve seen,” Hermann says. “It would take a great deal for me to not like you.”

Newt wants to tell Hermann that under the coat, the vest, the tunic, Newt is not the same man Hermann thinks he knows. Not even in the letters.

“I’m not like the others, Newt,” Hermann says, and Newt inhales a piercing cold air. “I’m not going to press the issue if you truly don’t wish me to know.” Hermann pushes himself to a stand and folds his coat over his arm. “It’s quite late. I should retire, I think.”

Newt stares at him dumbly. Disappointment, or-or the sudden deflation of all adrenaline, rather, overtakes him.

“Of course,” Newt says. “Yes. Yes, you should. I’ll, ah, see you tomorrow?” This is what he says, but what he wants to say is that he is not like _others_ either. He is quite different—quite apart. He wants to pull Hermann to a stop and tell him the he feels. It’s not just classifying and tearing things apart. He wants to bring things together, too.

“I’ll wait for you at the door,” Hermann says, tilting his head and looking down at Newt. Newt can’t entirely decipher what the expression on Hermann’s face is—it’s drawn into complete shadow. “Get some rest, Newton. You’ve become so strange lately.”

Newt swallows and averts his gaze, down and out into the fire. Yes, strange. “Goodnight, Hermann,” he says.

“_Rest_.”

The silence that follows the click of the lock is broken by the crackling of the fire. People claim to see shapes in flames quite often: images, predictions. Newt’s never seen one. Newt’s never cared much for predictions, preferring to steer his life in the very critical moment.

If the fire dances, it only says: play with me, I promise you’ll get burnt.

#

Newt wakes with his cheek pressed to cool velvet. The fire has died down. The room is too cold, it makes him shiver into awareness. If the light is any referent, he still has a few hours before he should get ready. Weak, blue-haze of early morning fog that’s rolled down from the hills. He stares at it for a few moments, padding on bare feet across the paneling and holding the mug of stale tea in his hands. He sips it and grimaces—it’s gone dark and bitter.

He could stay up, he reasons; wait for the dawn to spread its wings, wait for Hermann to knock on the door. But he is still exhausted, and he is always waiting. He’s a bit tired of it, truthfully, so he shuffles to his bedroom, up creaky stairs and past curling wallpaper. His bed is empty beside him. It has not always been so. At times, there have been several bodies dimpling the sheets. There have been men and women whose sweat-dappled shoulders he’s laid kisses upon, and found their frizzy hairs on the pillow the day after. As of late, there haven’t been any. No hairs to find but his own, no extra plates or mugs to wash but his and Hermann’s. He’s never found one of Hermann’s hairs anywhere. No glimmering hazel strewn on the chairs. He’s certainly never seen Hermann’s bared shoulders, the marble jut of his wings of ilium, or the soft down that scumbles down his stomach. These are things he imagines entirely.

He skims his fingers over the cotton sheets listlessly, imagining it is not cloth and fiber, but skin and sinew and silver bone beneath.

#

Hermann moves into Newt’s lab.

They fight plenty of times, loudly and heatedly. Newt revels in it, puts his all into raising his voice so much he becomes hoarse. _Yes_, he says. _Yes_, he thinks. _Yes_, _this is exactly it_. But it doesn’t change anything. There is still Hermann, the supine slope of his back across the room. It is so hard to not simply stare, see Hermann at work. Notice the minute idiosyncrasies that make up Hermann. When Hermann works, he mumbles to himself under his breath. He rolls the chalk between his fingers. He taps his cane against the floor. He bites his lip. He turns his face to the open window, looks out it, beyond it, beyond landscape and words.

Newt gets behind on his workload and becomes further irritable. His department head is breathing down his neck, and there’s Hermann, sleeves rolled back from his bird bone wrists. Newt slams his hands against his desk, not caring for the way Hermann jolts and exclaims. Newt does it again, and again, and again until there’s hardly a breath in between each one. He only stops when Hermann grabs him by the wrists.

“Newt!” Hermann growls, his face pale and sweating, hair disheveled. Despite how annoying Newt must be, how interruptive, how disgusting, how distracting, he looks worried. “Newt, enough.”

Newt feels his face crumple, letting out the most choked sob. It rattles through him, reverberating up from the deepest ice hollow inside him. It is monstrous, this thing inside him. “I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I’m sorry Hermann. I’m not strong enough.”

Hermann’s brow creases and his grip on Newt’s wrists loosens. He hesitates only a moment before he pulls Newt into an awkward, sharp embrace. He pets Newt’s upper back as Newt keeps shaking and tucking his face against the rough fabric of Hermann’s vest. And, oh, how Newt’s wanted this closeness. It makes him tremble harder. He never wants to stop being a tremulous thing between Hermann’s arms—if that’s what it takes.

But, they must part eventually. Newt avoids Hermann’s gaze and wipes at his nose.

“I think,” Hermann says, paused and clearly still thinking as he talks. “I think we should head off early.”

At that, Newt’s gaze snaps to him in surprise. Hermann never takes off early. Not even when he’s sick.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” Hermann says. “You’re clearly in no condition to be working. Besides, the outsides will do you a world of good.” Hermann wrinkles his nose as he looks around the messy lab.

“I can leave on my own,” Newt says, bewildered and weak.

“I couldn’t possibly leave you alone,” Hermann says with a decisive shake of the head. “You’ll just end up getting lost on the way home, and then I’m without a lab partner.”

Damn Newt for feeling even a shred of miserable warmth at that. He laughs, just a step from sour.

It’s late afternoon, everything still alit until the far horizon. Weather as temperamental as it is, the snow is merely a scant, staggered presence outside. The path is mostly clear but for vague glimmering lumps of packed ice. There is plenty to distract from the cigarette pinned, almost forgetfully, between Hermann’s lips. He has this habit of passing his tongue over where the cigarette was, and worrying the spot with his teeth as he exhales heat and smoke into the frigid air.

The air is dry and chalky, and the cigarette makes Newt’s eyes burn—water. He is particularly sensitive today. Hermann seems particularly agile today. Still, once they’ve crossed the stone bridge over the river, Hermann points at one of the benches near the shore. It’s only a bit recessed from the path, enough that one must be wary of getting slush and mud on one’s shoes, but not so far gone that it’s a hassle to return.

They sit, sky going from periwinkle to peach, and Hermann taps the ash off the end of his cigarette with lax fingers. He’s not looked at Newt, not regarded him with a side-glance or questioning murmur. He’s been watching the birds swim and dip into the water, shaking droplets off and touching beak-to-beak. Newt could tell him all about how they travel miles and miles and miles when the seasons change, or how some of them mate for life.

Instead, Newt jiggles his leg and rakes his fingers through his hair half a dozen times. It’s not been long. Minutes, really. Finally, Hermann puts out the cigarette with his heel, and looks at him.

“I’ve been offered a position,” he says. Newt doesn’t fare well when Hermann gets like this—intense in the way that he can sustain himself. He doesn’t blink, barely moves. Just regards Newt as if suddenly everything he’d previously been paying attention to instead of Newt simply doesn’t exist. “The university I gave a paper at last, do you remember? They’ve caught wind of my, ah, unfortunate situation, so to speak.”

“Did you take it?” Newt asks, unable to keep the stillness Hermann cultivates.He pushes his fingertips together until his joints ache.

“Haven’t decided yet,” Hermann says, voice contemplative. “I suppose I’m waiting.”

There’s always been this quality to their relationship. Distance is nothing new to them, but to have Hermann so close—so close that Newt has come to know the chalk he prefers, and the meticulous detail he puts into writing each number—only to have him leave, is perhaps more than he is able to process.

He was once in a train station waiting for his connection when, quite incidentally, several trains began to arrive at once. Newt had never been in a place so loud, so paralyzing, so peopled. Hermann may say he is erratic and noisy, but truthfully Newt is afraid of many large things. Things that in their expanse or magnitude are somehow too complex to understand immediately terrify him. The depth of the need he has inside him terrifies him. After so many years, Newt himself would assume that one would grow tired or bored of the familiar. There is nothing familiar about Hermann.

The sharp profile of Hermann’s face, awkward jut of his chin, thin nose, hollowed cheeks, predictable and unpredictable in turn. Newt imagines that the day in the train station, conductors pulled the levers of the brakes all in perfect unison. Things synced up.

“You remember my letters?” Newt asks. “When I said I’d never met anyone like you?”

Gears probably ground together and wheels that had been free suddenly locked to screech against the tracks. Newt, standing on one of the many platforms had to cover his ears and duck his head. Too much, too loud, too sudden.

Something in Hermann’s expression shifts. Newt realizes he’d been guarded before, words reinforced and probably practiced. There is something softer, wistful, in the curl of Hermann’s wide mouth.

“Yes,” Hermann says, dipping his head in acknowledgement. “Of course. What of it?”

“Just wanted to know if you remembered,” Newt says. But that‘s not quite it. There should be more, but there are only parts that Newt can filter through to words. The sounds in the station had been too much. He’d needed to mute as much of it as possible, just to understand what had happened. There is still so much that Newt doesn’t understand. He understands desire, though perhaps not to its full extent. He understands the thing that twists inside him when he sees Hermann, or when he is seen by Hermann. He doesn’t understand that to its full extent either.

“It was quite memorable,” Hermann says, paused. “There’s no need to give me a parting speech just yet. I’ve not de—” Newt puts stocky fingers over long ones loosely open on Hermann’s thigh “—cided.”

“It’s not-It’s not a parting speech,” Newt says. There’s trembling. Maybe his, maybe Hermann’s. “If you leave, I’m not going to say goodbye.”

Hermann regards him in silence for a few beats. “Alright,” he says, quiet. “I’ve never met anyone like you, either.” There are the words, and then Hermann squeezes his hand and Newt closes his eyes. He feels the unsteady reed-thin hiss of his own breath and then he focuses outward, on the weight of his hand in Hermann’s. The dampness of it. The closeness of it. He gently pulls his hand from Hermann’s grip and lets the tips of his fingers dip under Hermann’s cuff, grazing the thin skin of his wrist, thumb rubbing firm over bone. In the exterior, beyond the dark of Newt’s closed eyes, beyond his heart and breath, beyond touch, Hermann lets out a shaky breath.

“Are you still undecided?” Newt asks. There is no motive behind the question. Newt’s never been one to ask people to stay.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Hermann says, and Newt opens his eyes. He meets Hermann’s gaze. It is wary, unsure, disbelieving.

“That’s fine,” Newt says. He allows himself a small smile. “Tea at mine?”

#

The kettle takes as long to heat the water as it ever has, and Hermann is in the doorway again, arms crossed, watching Newt. Newt knows, and Hermann knows he knows, but they’re both pretending to be utterly unaware of the acknowledgement. It’s only when the water’s done that Newt breaks the spell.

“Want to make your own cup for once?” Newt asks, and Hermann joins him at the counter. He has a box in his hands that, for all of Newt’s careful side-eying, he had not noticed before.

“I’ve actually brought a new tea for us both to try,” Hermann says. “I meant to share it before, but we’ve always been too tired.”

Newt eyes it curiously and reaches for it, jolts when Hermann’s hands cover his. His gaze meets Hermann’s—dizzying in intensity and concentration—and Hermann lifts his hand slowly, as if there could ever possibly be any sort of warning for what he does next. As if what he does next could ever be anticipated, however logical a step it may seem.

Hermann presses his lips to the fleshy skin of Newt’s palm, where thumb crests into lifeline. His eyes are closed, two dark gashes, and Newt can see the blue veins beneath the thin layer of skin. Newt does not breathe, suspended in the moment, strung and pierced through by the soft drag of Hermann’s lips.

“Forgive me,” Hermann mumbles against his palm. “If I’ve misinterpreted.”

“You’ve not,” Newt says, voice a hoarse breath of sharp syllables.

Hermann opens his eyes again and looks up at Newt through his lashes before he lets Newt’s hand drop. Newt hesitates only a moment, and then he’s cupping Hermann’s face, dragging his fingers along the cut planes of his cheeks wonderingly. He pulls him closer, body to body until the thrum that rattles him is surely felt throughout Hermann’s body. Hermann’s hands settle at Newt’s waist, pulling him closer at the same time as he presses him back. The box is forgotten, _clack!_ on the floor and stumble-stop somewhere beneath the counter. Newt’s hip, sharp against the cabinets, bruised against a hard surface, but there is no time to think of it as more than a pinch because Hermann kisses him properly this time. Lips catch, soft, slow, warm. Hermann’s thumbs at his hips hold him steady. The kettle screams and screams and screams but Newt can’t tell it apart from the collapsing, cascading thing inside of himself.

#

“You’ll leave?” Newt asks, lying on his front as he traces invisible patterns onto the near-invisible down on Hermann’s stomach. Not imagined this time—the wings of ilium, the jut of hip, the pale shoulder. He presses his nose to Hermann’s ribs, closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. Hermann’s fingers card and tug through Newt’s hair.

“They’ve a space in the biology department,” Hermann says, quiet. Newt pauses, complex patterns falling away from his mind’s eye. “I’d miss you very much if you weren’t there.”

Newt doesn’t open his eyes, only breathes in Hermann finally dimpling his sheets. Finally here where he’s wanted him for so long, even if unvoiced. “Where?”

“Germany,” Hermann says and Newt exhales loudly. “I know you’re not overly fond, and perhaps I’ve been presumptuous.”

“You haven’t. I’m not particularly _fond_ of this university.” The pay _is_ abysmal. But, well, Newt is a bit tired of the weather around these parts. He’d hoped for something in the Americas.

“There’s been some odd activity—magnetic fields causing the plant and animal life to develop at accelerated rates,” Hermann says and Newt can hear the smile in his voice. _Bastard_. “It’s why I went in the first place.”

Newt lifts his head and looks at Hermann with narrowed eyes. “That was the first thing you should have said.” 

“I didn’t want to create any biases,” Hermann says, modestly, and Newt raises his eyebrow, looking down at Hermann’s bare chest pointedly.

“Ah,” Newt says, voice flat. “You’re right, I had _none_ before you mentioned magnetic fields.”

“Well.” Hermann has the decency to blush. Newt can tell he’s nervous by the way he pulls at the threads of Newt’s blanket. That he should be nervous, that Newt can tell he’s nervous after all this time. Small wonders.

“Why don’t we get cleaned and you tell me more about this position, huh?” Newt says softly, a hand on Hermann’s thigh. Hermann’s gaze darts up to meet his and he smiles, just a quirk at the corner of the mouth.

“A kiss, first,” Hermann murmurs.

Newt leans in, unable to stop the smile mirrored on his face. Kissing Hermann is like kissing no one else. It’s not only that Hermann is a good kisser, patient, curious. Newt has been waiting to kiss Hermann for a very _very_ long time. There is something surreal about being granted permission to do it. About having it requested.

“Another,” Hermann says, so small, so incredibly voiceless that it’s lost to the sheets.

It’s impossible to deny him that kind of desire, so Newt kisses him again and again. There is no sating it, no soothing this meeting of bodies in the lowlight. Hermann waits for him, returns to him, reaches out for him, drags him down until Newt adores him sinkingly.

#

Waiting in a pool of light and undone bedding, sweat dapples Hermann’s skin and he asks Newt, “Am I leaving?”

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of open ending? Up to the reader to interpret whether it goes south from here or not, but I'd like to think that at some indeterminate moment in the future, they do live together in a small cottage where they collect all sorts of oddities.


End file.
